But it is impossible to sever a man like Pinckney’s thoughts on slavery from the rest of his worldview. Even if we allow that the Constitution was eventually amended to undo Pinckney’s monstrous beliefs about who was a human, it is hard to trust any argument that relies on his or his contemporaries' intent, none of whom could have envisioned Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.Pickney objected to the Declaration's "all men are created equal" precisely because he understood his slaves to be "men." He knew the radical nature of that statement and where it would lead.
“If Slavery be wrong, it is justified by the example of all the world,” Charles Pinckney, a Revolutionary War hero and a member of South Carolina’s delegation to the convention — and a slaveholder — said, per a New York Times account. “An attempt to take away the right, as proposed, will produce serious objections to the Constitution.”James Pickney: b. 1746, d. 1825
Just to correct myself from the above... poor memory, sorry.
Pinckney’s objection of any declaration of equality at birth was not of the Declaration’s use of the term but, later, upon any inclusion of such statement in a bill or rights, as he felt that any assertion of natural rights would require the assertion of equality at birth. As a slave holder, Pinckney felt it better to avoid any such statement, which means, by his own logic, that natural law and slavery are incompatible.